Raiding and Teamspeak.

[FunkYeahDragons]

It's just good practice to be understanding and accommodating to members when it comes to what they need to clear or any difficulties they have, voice chat unrelated.

Whether or not an FC uses it (and how) is up to individual culture and management. I've been in FCs where if you didn't use it, good luck breaking into a clique. And another where the regulars tended to use it for themselves but would respond to me when I typed in FC chat, either using voice or typing themselves, just fine most of the time. Back then I was pretty shy about speaking.

Restricting FC members either way seems too dogmatic for a video game, like the FCs that say you can't say "shit" in chat in a game with everything from murder to prostitution--and not because someone's kids are usually listening, either.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Even after the essay I wrote above (lol, sorry for that), my stance is this:

As a leader, I've provided the resource for everyone, and everyone is free to use or not use it. Now, if perhaps a refusal to use it without understanding it leads to having difficulties, you'll find me rather unsympathetic, even if still helpful. In the case of Discord, I share lots of information from guides to videos, to even good information I get here on the forums. I make it available through any and all channels. If someone refuses those channels, then they'd better be ready to do a little leg work of their own to get it themselves.

VOIPs to me, are much like Parsers; useful, even if not always necessary. Mileage may vary from person to person, of course.

[Morbid]

I stopped using it when raiding. I don't really need it either, in fact no one does. Just persistence and patience with yourself and your party members. Don't have that, you won't clear.

Not to mention the sheer amount of morons who talk crap about their fellow members. Most of these people being socially awkward and have no idea how to talk to people, just flat out d***s who make fun of anyone they're not familiar with, and then the typical elitist p****. Its just not worth it. Makes me a bit glad they didn't give us actual in-game chat, I'd be kicked out from the amount of 20yr old kids I traumatized for lack of respect for fellow players.

I don't use it for my friends either. You met me through chat, keep it that way. People to bias nowadays with voices. If your not clear voiced or sound intimidating they'll want nothing to do with you. Srry for little rant but yeah.

This right here

I just don't have much desire to sit in chat channels with people anymore. I was part of a TS group for about 2 years played with the folks everyday. Floating in nullsec for hours just chatting on the buddy buddy shit..

One disagreement and slip of a racial slur later and I no longer feel the need to be in any voip service like that or for that matter getting to know people anymore than I need to in game.

[Jim_Berry]

Honestly, the last time I have use TeamSpeak for Raid was when Second Coil released. I'm usually good at learning from my own mistakes after a few mishaps. However, this changes due to the different groups I run with. Group A may do it this way while Group B does it that way.

[Ashkendor]

It's a great tool, especially for progression. It's not *necessary*, but it does help a ton.

I agree. Some people find it more useful than others. I find it invaluable not only for making callouts for raid mechanics (yes people should be paying attention but we're all human, and I can't count the number of mechanics that have been saved from a screwup because of a callout) but for discussing strategy. Not only that, but there's the social factor. I'm kind of a selectively social person, I suppose. I'm in voice chat almost all the time with people in my FC and static, but don't tend to go around to other chats too much unless it's for a raid or something like teaching content to someone. Explaining complex mechanics can be hard on the hands.

I will say this, if a group you join is using voice and you are not, you better not mess up a lot (especially on things often called-out, like who is stunning which add in A3S.)

So much this. If you refuse to get into voice chat for whatever reason, you'd best be on your toes because the party already has a convenient excuse to ditch you if you aren't performing at 100%. I can't tell you how many times we've pugged one person for my static and we get someone that refuses to get into voice chat, insisting they don't need to because they know what they're doing. Some of them even get semi-insulted at the offer. Then they proceed to miss vital mechanics that we were actually calling out.

We offer the voice chat info when people join the party for whatever, whether it be for farming ex primals or for Savage. For easy content it's more like, "Hey, wanna come derp off with us while we farm?" whereas for Savage it's more for tactics.

[xXRaineXx]

Personally as I play with a Bard, it helps me play songs accordingly people can tell when and how long I need to sing without having to me keep staring at the tp and mp bars. Though one idiot in my static says do your job and do it yourself... why use voicechat then? Voicechat helps a lot and you don't want to speak, just listening is also fine.

[Savvy]

I don't ever use mic on MMO's, I haven't in all my 20 years of gaming across them and I've never seen a benefit from people using it, most of them are still just as clueless with it as they are without it. I feel like a lot of what is being said over mic can be seen easily for yourself if you're paying attention, but so many people never do. I think voicechat is much more suited to games that aren't just mechanics you can learn if you try hard enough, games like FPS multiplayers and Mobas.

That being said I don't give two butts if people use it or don't use it.

[Jetstream_Fox]

I haven't used it and I've cleared all the content in 2.0 when I actually cared about clearing stuff. I've seen good and bad for it, but mostly bad, been kicked out of raids and FCs for not using, been accepted into them without it. It's a matter of perspective.

[Beckett]

Situation : swiftcast is down. Now do you really need the healer to communicate to you that swiftcast is down? Or did you just not notice the person who's dead has been dead for longer than 10 seconds?

Yes, you really do need to communicate that Swiftcast is down. I've seen it happen way too often that a Summoner and healer will both pop their swiftcast at the same time because they weren't able to communicate properly.

Maybe one of them didn't have Swiftcast available, but it only had a few seconds left before it became available again. There's no way they would be able to type that out, but because of the delay, the other person would think they didn't have it available, and would pop their own Swiftcast. With voice chat they can easily say, "My swiftcast is back up in 10 seconds."

Maybe the Summoner has Swiftcast available but didn't notice the dead person because they were focusing on their rotation. Without voice chat, the healer (not wanting to waste their Swiftcast if they don't have to) would wait a bit for the SMN to raise, notice they weren't, assume they couldn't and try raising themselves. At this point the SMN finally notices the dead person and also tries to raise them, and both the healer and SMN waste their Swiftcast and MP. With voice chat, the healer can quickly call the SMN's attention.

It's certainly possible to raid without voice chat, but it's much, much easier with voice chat. Especially if you need to discuss strategies. A team that's doing everything 100% perfectly doesn't need voice callouts, but if there's a wipe, you're going to want to discuss what happened. This can be very frustrating without voice chat, since typing out responses takes much longer and there's no indication that you're even at the keyboard until you hit Enter. Using voice chat is much more convenient and less frustrating for everyone involved.

[FoxyAreku]

I know this may be seen as insensitive and I apologize, but I seriously don't understand online voice stigma.

I personally don't see it as any different than talking to somebody in real life. Do the people who are too shy for VOIP just never talk to people IRL either?